Days of Darkness
by Camilla Faye Montgomery
Summary: By Kate: Right after the plane crash, Mac wakes up and finds Harm unconscious


Days of Darkness  
By Camilla Faye Montgomery  
  
By Kate  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own JAG; even if I did I couldn't watch it because my school wouldn't let me.  
  
Rating: I don't know, PG-13? I can't read the rating guide, because no internet.  
  
OK, here's the thing: I thought that Mac was in the back seat when I wrote this. Then I watched the show again and realized that she was in the front, and the plane crash was not as bad as I remembered. So I fixed the seat thing, rather sloppily, and I kept all damage and injuries, b/c I didn't want to rewrite the whole story. So here it is. I'm writing this paragraph in my brand new dorm room on my uncomfortable dorm bed. It's freezing in here. There are air conditioning problems. I don't know how I'll ever get this posted. No internet allowed, so I guess I'll have to save it on a disk and hope that a CD burned on my iBook will be compatible with the school computers in the library and post it from there and delete all traces of it from the school computer's memory. Brilliant, right? It's August 22, we'll see when this finally gets posted. If my plan doesn't work, then you won't see this until Thanksgiving. So here's the new plan. I'm going to print this out, mail it to Ashley, she'll type it up and post it probably. Does anyone really care how this gets posted, as long as it does get posted?  
  
Oh, and I love my college, I really do. I'm just being snippy about the TV and internet prohibition. Because I also love my TV and internet.  
  
The Story:  
  
"Ohhh," Mac groaned as she slowly drifted towards consciousness and the material world. She decided she liked the world of her dreams better. In her dreams there weren't branches and leaves poling at her from all sides. There wasn't the warm sticky feeling of blood on the left side of her face. There wasn't a pilot's console in front of her, pinning her legs. And there wasn't a wave of pain that was somehow both a piercing sword and a dull ache enveloping her entire body.  
  
Yes, her dreams were much better. Especially when a certain Navy Commander showed up in them, which was often. She wanted to go back, to return to the safe and painless world created by her mind. He would be there and it would be nice, oh so much nicer than this. She didn't want to worry about the pain in her legs or the pounding of her head or. Wait! There was something she needed to remember, something important. Legs.her legs hurt. Why did her legs hurt? Because of the pilot's console. But she hadn't been flying a plane. Who was the pilot? Oh God!  
  
"Harm! Are you okay? Answer me, please! You're all right, aren't you? You have to be."  
  
she had to get to him, had to see him. He must be unconscious. That's why he didn't answer her. She struggled against the metal prison that held her. Pushed it with her legs as much as she could. It hurt so much, so much. Still she pushed against the front of the plane with her legs, her arms, her whole body. It was like she was fighting a war, and she knew she could never win. Her enemy was too heavy, too strong, too stubborn. And yet she tried.  
  
She needed a miracle. Sometimes when you need a miracle enough, one will come to you. Not this time. That would be too easy, too TV perfect. No, she would have to think logically, be a Marine, find her way out of this without help from anyone or anything. Not even him. He needed her now, so she would do what she had to.somehow.  
  
When you're not strong enough to move something yourself, what do you do? Leverage. She needed to find a branch or piece of debris to force the thing off of her legs. Well, there were branches and chunks of airplane all around her. She turned her body to the right as much as she would without screaming or passing out from pain, and grabbed a heavy branch. Jamming the end of it under the console, she pushed the lever with all of the strength she had left, and some she didn't. Finally, finally she was freed from her prison. She scrambled out of the plane and lowered herself to the ground.  
  
"Harm? Are you awake yet? I'm coming," she was afraid to walk the three steps to him, afraid to see what had happened to him. She felt absolutely retched and knew she must have some broken bones as well as other assorted serious injuries, and she shuddered at the thought of him in the same or worse pain.  
  
She walked forward, and saw him, and cried out. It was gruesome. There was a great gash across his face, bloody and bruised. Chunks of tempered glass covered his body like translucent snow; they mixed with the read that flowed from his face and countless scrapes, cuts, and puncture wounds. His legs were pinned, as hers had been, under the seat before him. His left arm was crushed between his body and the side of the plane, and his other arm hung unnaturally, twisted.  
  
"Harm! Harm!" she cried to him, at him, "You have to wake up!" She didn't know what to do, couldn't remember. She should get him out of there. She shouldn't move him. Check for heartbeat, breathing. Run away screaming for someone to take care of her and him, someone to be what she couldn't. but there was no one here, not in this forest of homicidal trees. The trees had tried to kill them with branches sharp as swords, the trees had saved them from certain death, cradling the plane with branches gentle as a mother's arms. Oh, everything was strange and wrong. She wasn't really here, it was all a dream. How could anything as terrible and frightening and wrong as this be real?  
  
"Snap out of it, Marine!" She actually yelled out loud.  
  
She had to stop, calm herself, save him. She had done it before, hadn't she, saved him? She couldn't really remember, but it felt familiar. She leaned over his deathly still body, listened for the soft sound of his breath, felt for the steady beat of his pulse. She found neither. What to do? Try to pull him out of the smashed and warped plane to start CPR, and risk spinal damage, or leave him where he sat and try to find some help. No, she had to get him out. If she left him he would die for certain, he would have no chance for survival. How could she even think of that? She was a terrible person, she.  
  
"Cut it out Mac, there's no time for this," talking to herself, reassuring herself, trying to keep herself from slipping into insanity or total helplessness, was becoming a habit.  
  
Somehow, she freed his legs. Somehow, she pulled him out of the plane, and set him as gingerly, as gently as she would on the leaf=covered earth beneath. She looked at his ghastly form and couldn't remember how she had transported him from the plane to the ground. She could hardly recognize him. He looked so displaced, as if he didn't belong on this mortal plane, as if what made him Harm was no longer a part of him.  
  
"No," she whimpered almost inaudibly, as she leaned over him and began CPR. Then louder, "No!" and louder yet, until she was yelling, the sound reaching the treetops and still higher, "NO!"  
  
She kept trying to revive him, and as she did, her mind constructed countless scenarios. She saved him, brought him back to the world of the living, he thanked her, she kissed him, told him she wanted them to never be apart, the wedding was small-just Bud and Harriet and the Admiral and Meredith, he wrapped his arms around her waist and gazed over her shoulder at the baby she cradled, they lived happily ever after.  
  
Or she pounded on his chest and breathed into him for hours, until she couldn't even stay conscious, everyone was at his funeral, she gave a touching eulogy and broke down crying before she could finish, Bud and Harriet and the Admiral tried to comfort her, she stopped feeling anything but pain and grief and guilt, she stopped going to work, the phone kept ringing but she didn't answer it, she stayed in bed for days-trying to sleep away the hurt, she steeped off the bride, the water was cold.  
  
All this and more her mind created even as she beat his heart into beating, breathed his lungs into breathing. She wouldn't have stopped for anyone or anything, almost didn't stop for him. But the next time she brought her lips to his, she felt the soft warm wisp of his breath tickling her face. Her lips tingle at the unfamiliar and extremely welcome sensation. Her ear pressed against his chest, she heard, felt a weak but steady pulse.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~ OK people, I'm stuck. I want to make this into a long and many chaptered story, because I'm tired of writing short little self-contained stories. I have a kind of blurry idea of what I want to do with it, but I can't figure out what should happen immediately next. Ideas are appreciated. 


End file.
